<p>A complete copy of the license text is included in the file LICENSE in
the BusyBox source code.</p>
-<p><a href="/products.html">Anyone thinking of shipping BusyBox as part of a
+<p><a href="products.html">Anyone thinking of shipping BusyBox as part of a
product</a> should be familiar with the licensing terms under which they are
allowed to use and distribute BusyBox. Read the full test of the GPL (either
through the above link, or in the file LICENSE in the busybox tarball), and
GPL version 2, and the project's license is GPL version 2.</p>
<p>Older versions of BusyBox (versions 1.2.2 and earlier, up through about svn
-16112) included variants of the recommended "GPL version 2 or (at your option)
-later versions" boilerplate permission grant. Ancient versions of BusyBox
+16112) included variants of the recommended
+"GPL version 2 or (at your option) later versions" boilerplate
+permission grant. Ancient versions of BusyBox
(before svn 49) did not specify any version at all, and section 9 of GPLv2
-(the most recent version at the time) says those old versions may be
+(the most recent version at that time) says those old versions may be
redistributed under any version of GPL (including the obsolete V1). This was
conceptually similar to a dual license, except that the different licenses were
different versions of the GPL.</p>
<p>However, BusyBox has apparently always contained chunks of code that were
licensed under GPL version 2 only. Examples include applets written by Linus
Torvalds (util-linux/mkfs_minix.c and util_linux/mkswap.c) which stated they
-"may be redistributed as per the Linux copyright" (which Linus clarified in the
+"may be redistributed as per the Linux copyright" (which Linus
+clarified in the
2.4.0-pre8 release announcement in 2000 was GPLv2 only), and Linux kernel code
copied into libbb/loop.c (after Linus's announcement). There are probably
more, because all we used to check was that the code was GPL, not which
<h3>License enforcement</h3>
<p>BusyBox's copyrights are enforced by the <a
-href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org">Software Freedom Law Center</a>
+href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/">Software Freedom Law Center</a>
(you can contact them at gpl@busybox.net), which
-"accepts primary responsibility for enforcement of US copyrights on the
+"accepts primary responsibility for enforcement of US copyrights on the
software... and coordinates international copyright enforcement efforts for
-such works as necessary." If you distribute BusyBox in a way that doesn't
+such works as necessary." If you distribute BusyBox in a way that doesn't
comply with the terms of the license BusyBox is distributed under, expect to
hear from these guys. Their entire reason for existing is to do pro-bono
legal work for free/open source software projects. (We used to list people who
-violate the BusyBox license in <a href="/shame.html">The Hall of Shame</a>,
+violate the BusyBox license in <a href="shame.html">The Hall of Shame</a>,
but these days we find it much more effective to hand them over to the
lawyers.)</p>
doing a good job at complying with the GPL, they get to be an
example of how to do things right. Please take a moment and
check out what they do with
-<a href="http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Content_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1115416836002&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper">
+<a href="http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Content_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1115416836002&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper">
distributing the firmware for their WRT54G Router.</a>
Following their example would be a fine way to ensure that you
have also fulfilled your licensing obligations.</p>
projects / oweals / busybox.git / commitdiff